Our olives are hand harvested into small crates and then swiftly delivered to the local frantoio (mill) nearby. There, the olives are sorted by hand to ensure only the best drupes are selected and then dropped into a stainless steel drum where air jets remove leaves and stems before washing.
The clean olives are then crushed into a paste (including stones, skins and pulp) before moving to a malaxer which is a vat with a continuous screw that turns the pulp, coaxing out droplets of oil from the cell membranes of the olive. The paste is then sent to a centrifuge that separates the oil from the skins, stones and flesh and then into a smaller centrifuge to remove any water from the oil.
The oil is then lightly filtered to ensure it is stable – cloudy oil is not necessarily a good thing if you want it to last. As extra virgin olive oil is a freshly pressed juice with no preservatives, unfiltered oil has particles in suspension that can prematurely age your oil. Filtration ensures a bright, clean, stable olive oil that has a shelf life of up to 18 months.
A combination of late frost, followed by rain during flowering and then a heat spike during the summer has reduced the yield of our olive trees significantly this year, but the results are sensational! Like our wine, our extra virgin olive oil it is a true expression of time and place. If you would like to order a case of six bottles to tide you over the winter months, please click here to order.
